Tagged dumps Hi5’s third-party dev platform

Social networking site Tagged will be dropping support for third party developers for its recently acquired hi5 gaming platform.

The company will instead replace the titles with games developed in-house.

VP of sales Steve Sarner told TechCrunch that the third party platform “wasn’t nearly as vibrant as we felt it could be or should be”, revealing that its own games had done better.

Sarner also said that it would be moving hi5 towards social discovery and to strengthen its virtual currency market.

He stated that the Hi5 website would also see some changes, designing it to more closely mirror Tagged. Whilst there are no plans to merge the two sites currently, Sarner did not rule out the possibility in the long term.

“We think that in the short- and mid-term, running two separate brands makes sense,” he said.

“We don’t want to completely alienate the current user-base. In the long-term, there’s certainly an opportunity for merging the brands.”